Category: Fractional COO & Structural Governance

You find out too late whether a project made money when costs, time and change requests are only reconciled after delivery. The weekly margin view that shows the number while there is still scope, price or staffing to change.

An operating model has reached its limit when the way you run decisions, cash and accountability can no longer carry the work. How to tell it apart, what breaks first, and who fixes it.

You cannot work out what to hand over because nothing is written down as a decision limit. A five-step method for moving outcomes, not tasks, to your team, and the two things to keep.

If your team can’t manage without you, it looks like a people problem and is almost always a structural one. The test that tells them apart, and what to fix first.

Most firms review financials monthly, in arrears, at partner level. The numbers that decide profitability need reviewing weekly, by name. Here is what belongs on the page.

UK firms wait a median 134 days from doing the work to banking the fee. The cash cycle has four stages, each with its own failure, and each fixable without new clients.

If two weeks away means checking email daily or returning to a backlog only you can clear, the business is not covering for you. It is waiting for you. Here is what to change.

Capable people checking every decision with you is not a confidence problem or a trust problem. It is what happens when nobody has written down what they are allowed to decide alone.

Revenue is growing, the accounts show a profit, and the bank balance is still tight. The gap between profit and cash is structural, and it is visible before it bites.

When things keep slipping through, the instinct is to blame attention to detail. The cause is almost always that no single person owns the outcome, and that is fixable.

Most founders delegate tasks and keep the decisions, which is why delegation rarely reduces their load. The order that works, and what to hand over at each stage.

A second-in-command runs the business day to day so the founder does not have to. What the role owns, when to hire, what it costs, and why most of these hires fail in year one.

The average law firm utilization rate is 38%: three billable hours in an eight-hour day. What the benchmark means, where the other five hours go, and the structural fix.